Financial Crisis

I've been trying to grasp how the Wall Street meltdown would impact the ordinary voter, who (we hear) opposes the bailout. Thomas Friedman (who misled me on Iraq, but whatever) had a great formulation in his column today:

Well, you say, “I don’t own any stocks — let those greedy monsters on Wall Street suffer.” You may not own any stocks, but your pension fund owned some Lehman Brothers commercial paper and your regional bank held subprime mortgage bonds, which is why you were able refinance your house two years ago. And your local airport was insured by A.I.G., and your local municipality sold municipal bonds on Wall Street to finance your street’s new sewer system, and your local car company depended on the credit markets to finance your auto loan — and now that the credit market has dried up, Wachovia bank went bust and your neighbor lost her secretarial job there.

For what it's worth: I have been following the events very closely but can't imagine trying to write about this complex issue, as I doubt if I can come up with anything original in the least. To date my favorite comments have come from John Stewart and Rachel Maddox on TV and Paul Krugman in his NYT columns and on TV interviews.